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Young Continues Fight Against GE Salmon

In their continued fight against genetically engineered (GE) fish, this week Congressmen Don Young, R-Alaska, Mike Thompson, D-Calif., Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Jared Huffman, D-Calif., introduced two pieces of legislation intended to prevent genetically engineered fish from making their way onto the nation’s dinner plates and spreading into the nation’s oceans.

The first bill, H.R. 394, would effectively ban all GE fish in the United States by prohibiting the shipment, sale, transportation, purchase, procession or release into the wild of GE salmon or other GE finfish unless the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service completes a full environmental impact statement and concludes that it will result in no such impact to the environment.

The second bill, H.R. 393, would improve efforts to inform the American consumer by requiring the labeling of all GE fish sold for consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.

“The FDA is reviewing GE salmon as if it were a new animal drug, but this type of review process is obviously dead wrong for a product destined for our dinner plates,” Congressman Young said. “Furthermore, it fails to consider the possible threat GE fish pose to natural salmon fisheries in this nation.”

The legislation is aimed at AquaBounty, a company that has been trying since 1996 to get approval to market eggs made by splicing genetic material from chinook and Atlantic salmon and an ocean pout that would grow to market size in half the time of unaltered farmed Atlantic salmon.